Subject: SMML VOL 2949 Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 03:29:32 +1000 The Ship Modelling Mailing List (SMML) is proudly sponsored by SANDLE http//sandlehobbies.com For infomation on how to Post to SMML and Unsubscribe from SMML http//smmlonline.com/aboutsmml/rules.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS INDEX 1 Re museum ships 2 Re Sinking the Supership vcr alert!!!!!!! 3 Re Fleet Air Arm 4 US vs British carriers 5 which titanic 6 Re Museum Ships 7 Re Museum ships double duty?? 8 Re Fleet Air Arm 9 Re Yamato sinking 10 Re Fleet Air Arm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From "Shirley Sachsen" Subject Re museum ships >> Oakland managed to buy and fix up the USS Ranger which is tied up pierside in Alameda and open for visitors, it has had some real ups and downs in funding which is mostly done by private donations. (It gets a lot of publicity for its well known and well-documented ghost sightings, too!) << wrong on many levels. it's the USS Hornet, not the Ranger, and Oakland did not buy nor did fix up this ship. it was donated, like many other gray boats, by the Navy to a foundation. the ups and downs, while cash (and lack thereof) driven, has more to do with mgmt than anything else. as to the publicity related to 'ghost sightings', that was the marketing dept's bright idea. personally, I'd rather the ship and its men be remembered more for their contributions in service to their country. but that comes back to mgmt and how they decide to present the ship and its history. anyway, as for using such vessels for disaster centers/shelters. the carriers are in a better position for this than other types and have served for such in the past (magic carpet cruises bring home soldiers from WWII being the first such use) and having a great deal of berthing space. Hornet petitioned for such a use as a disaster control center, however the city of Alameda wasn't too keen on the idea. the MARAD ships have also offered the city similar services. again refused. IIRC, Intrepid has recently been set up as a disaster center, NY having better sense than the city of Alameda. as for states and cities not running such ships, wasn't the Battleship North Carolina taken over by the state? s ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) From Tom Ruprecht Subject Re Sinking the Supership vcr alert!!!!!!! I enjoy PBS and Nova as much as anyone, but I have learned that Nova should not be taken as authoritative. We need to be just as skeptical re. Nova productions as any other infotainment with which they compete. We can only hope that viewers either already know, or that the show will spark an interest in researching the event. Rupe ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) From "GRAHAM BOAK" Subject Re Fleet Air Arm >> The swordfish against the Devestator or the Avenger and the Kate? Surely not! Japanese and US carrier aircraft were leagues above the Fleet Air Arm! << In the mid-40s, yes indeed, but look at the design and service dates, and compare like with like. The Swordfish was as good as its contemporaries, eg Jean. The Devastator was looking more advanced, but had only a marginally better performance, and it was inevitably inferior to aircraft of a later generation such as the Avenger!. By the time the FAA had to face the Kate alongside the Avenger, the Swordfish had gone from the fleet carriers as an attack aircraft it's long duration in service was as an ASW aircraft. The Skua was as good as the later Vindicator. I was thinking of the Nimrod and Osprey, the last generation of naval aircraft for which the RAF had full control. By the design years of the late thirties, the Admiralty were demanding Albacores and the corruption of a decent design into the Barracuda. Place the blame where it belongs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) From "Reid, John (AFIT)" Subject US vs British carriers Most SMMLies are aware of/have read Friedman’s series of books like “US Carriers Design and Development” but many people seem to have missed his comparable volume on British carriers, which includes a comparative analysis dealing with many of the points raised on-list in recent days. It also includes the not minor detail that the 3 years difference in the major aircraft armaments programs of US and UK was a generation of hardware – what matters to characteristics is when the spec was issued, rather than when the metal first went into the air. Corelli Barnett’s work about the relative effectiveness of war industries is also food for thought; if the UK had shipyards as fast as the USA, the pace of build-up might well have produced more comparable outcomes in hardware terms. Was Essex an effective design? – absolutely yes (but would it have looked as good in Winter North Atlantic conditions with low freeboard to open hangar relative to length?) Was Illustrious an effective design? – absolutely yes (for narrow seas, but its short legs really told in the Pacific) Was Essex an adaptable design for post-war growth – yes (but SCB27/125 was only possible because of Korean war finance availability) Was Illustrious an adaptable design? – not really, too tightly integrated in order to fit into treaty limits, hence outrageous cost of Victorious rebuild (and hence no repeats) Seems to me the real truth is that comparing warships built to different design philosophies, against different staff requirements, with different cost limits, to accommodate aircraft built under similarly differing parameters, is fun but cannot have a definitive answer of the form “A was better than B”. For me as a modeller, I say great! Let’s have them all on the shelf so we can see the impact of these different design decisions; as a historian, I say great! Let’s honour all the brave men [and now also women] without whom these ships would not be great. What I would *really* like to see is a similarly definitive analysis of the design and operational doctrine of the other navies which developed air arms – IJN, and wannabees Germany, Italy in WW2 period - but I doubt that it could be written, for lack of surviving documentary sources. John Reid Italy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) From "roger buckley" Subject which titanic Her Indoors has decreed that as we will be having extensive work done to the house in the new year some of my kits have to go. Problem is that as i get older the scales increase so i can see them, the figures 112, the cars 112, and the planes and ships are also on the massive scale. I have the academy/minicraft(korea) & the minicraft(china) 1350 versions of the Titanic as well as the Academy 1400 scale, two have to go -- which would list members prefer to construct. (i was banned from an ebay bid on the wooden magazine cover version !!!) cya roger ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) From URUDOFSKY@aol.com Subject Re Museum Ships The finest ship is the USS Wisconsin. I walked on her decks a few days ago. It is a thing a beauty and power. http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/USS%20WISCONSIN/WISKY19.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/USS%20WISCONSIN/WISKY23.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/USS%20WISCONSIN/WISKY7.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/USS%20WISCONSIN/WISKY4.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/WISKY2.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/WISKY3.jpg http//i18.photobucket.com/albums/b138/urudofsky/USSWisconsinJurichBistro.jpg Ulrich ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) From BRADFORD CHAUCER Subject Re Museum ships double duty?? I think I sort of started this thread a while back when I suggested the use of retired aircraft carriers as emergency shelters. I see your points, and agree, trying to put a WWII vintage ship back into service for such purposes would be cost prohibitive and would not provide sufficent accomodations. Rather my original suggestion was to utilize some of the non-nuclear Forrestall class carriers that are either still in service and due to be retired or very recently out of service but not yet stripped ships. My original suggestion IPOF was to use the USS Kennedy which is due to be decommissioned hence still opperable. If weaponry, aircraft and jet fuel were removed, and movement of the ship restricted to coastal travel between the Gulf and east coast, the ship could be manned by a much much smaller crew. Main engines would be used only to reposition the ship from location to location and to provide onboard power and environmental. The hangar deck could be closed, partitioned and used for temporary housing. perhaps some type of housing space could be built on the flight deck but this may not be feasible. However a portion of the flight deck would serve for helicopters. The ship's comm equ could serve for emergency civil communications and C&C for areas where civilian facilities are put out of commission. It seems a somewhat better use than turning them into a reef. It is not an ideal or long term solution but it is something that can be moved into an area right behind a hurricane and provide temporary housing, feeding and medical facilities till land based solutions can be put into place. Surly it has to be a better solution than the disaster in the superbowl!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) From "Erhardtsen" Subject Re Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm might not have the best planes at the begin of world war 2, but you ought to remember, that the begin was August 1939 fore FAA not December 1941 In August 1939 there was 11 Brewster Buffalo on Lexington. The rest of US carrier based fighters was biplanes. In France it was a slow high wing monoplane. Japan was most likely in the lead - not with the Zero, it came in 1940 - but with the A5M Claud. The British used there monoplane dive bomber Skua as fighter. I think it could cope well with other dive bombers, but it was not much of a fighter. Fighters like Wildcat and Corsair was in use on British carriers long before they was used on US carriers Regards Erik Erhardtsen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) From Sab1156@aol.com Subject Re Yamato sinking Hi Norman, In reply to your question about machine gunning survivors of the Yamato It could be true. A few months ago I watched the military channel,a report about US subs in the Pacific. One part showed crew members shooting japanese survivors from a sunken troop transporter. The war in the Pacific was brutal and the winner always gets away with war crimes! best regards Detlef ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) From "Allen Stevens" Subject Re Fleet Air Arm >> 'The swordfish against the Devastator or the Avenger and the Kate? Surely not! Japanese and US carrier aircraft were leagues above the Fleet Air Arm! << Swordfish may have been old but look at the success rate - Taranto - Three battleships out of action, a cruiser and two destroyers badly damaged plus two other vessels sunk Bismark disabled. Anti submarine warfare (18 solo kills and another 16 or so assists) example being the sinking of U64 in the Narvik Fjords which allowed HMS Warspite in to finish off the German Destroyers. Malta based Swordfish participated in nighttime strikes against Italian resupply convoys these strikes carried out by Swordfish and other aircraft accounted for nearly 50000 tons of shipping a month and helped to strangle Rommel in North Africa. French Battle cruiser Dunkerque disabled And many more examples beside so yes she was obsolete, a German officer on Bismark described his shock at being attacked by Bi planes, no good against fighters (but then she mostly operated at night) but to imply that she was somehow inferior in terms of her impact is just plain wrong. American and Japanese aircraft may have been faster and heavier armed but who would have predicted that a 1st world war design aircraft would have such an impact? I am sure that all Merchant Seamen be they American or British were very glad of the sight of the old Stringbag loitering above a convoy! Regards to all Allen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the SMML site for the List Rules, Reviews, Articles, Backissues, Member's models & Reference Pictures at http//smmlonline.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of Volume